Boys Life

dead…”
    The rasping was louder. Mr. Lightfoot used a metal probe to touch a small red box from which the noise emanated. Then he used his finger, and he whistled as he drew the finger back. “Oh-oh,” he said. “Gettin’ kinda warm.”
    Mr. Moultry began to blubber, his nose running and the tears trickling from his swollen eyes.
    Mr. Lightfoot’s fingers were at work again, tracing the wires to their points of origin. The smell of heat rose into the air, which shimmered over the red box. Mr. Lightfoot scratched his chin. “Y’know,” he said, “I believe we gots us a problem here.”
    Mr. Moultry trembled on the edge of coma.
    “See, I”-Mr. Lightfoot tapped his chin, his eyes narrowed with concentration-“fix things. I don’t break ’em.” He drew in a long breath and slowly released it. “Gone have ta do a little breakin’, seems ta me.” He nodded. “Yessuh. Sure do hate ta break somethin’ so pretty.” He chose another, larger hammer. “Gone have ta do it.” He cracked the hammer down on the red box. Its plastic skin split from one end to the other. Mr. Moultry’s teeth gripped his tongue. Mr. Lightfoot removed the two plastic sections and regarded the smaller workings and wires within. “Jus’ mysteries in mysteries,” he said. He put his hand down into the toolbox and it came out holding a little wire cutter that still had its ninety-nine-cent price sticker on it. “Now, listen good,” he told the bomb, “don’t you burp in my face, hear?”
    “Ohhhhh God, oh Jeeeesus above, oh I’m comin’ to heaven, I’m comin’,” Mr. Moultry gasped.
    “You get there,” Mr. Lightfoot said with a faint smile, “you tell St. Peter he’s got a fix-it-man on the way.” He reached the cutter toward two wires-one black, the other white-that crisscrossed at the heart of the machine.
    “Wait,” Mr. Moultry whispered. “Wait…”
    Mr. Lightfoot paused.
    “Gotta get it off my soul,” Mr. Moultry said, his eyes as bugged as the minstrel’s. “Gotta get light, so I can fly to heaven. Listen to me…”
    “Listenin’,” Mr. Lightfoot told him as the bomb spoke on.
    “Gerald and me… we… it was Gerald did the most of it, really… I didn’t wanna have nothin’ to do with it… but… it’s set to go off at… ten in the mornin’… day after Christmas. Hear me? Ten in the mornin’. It’s a box… full of dynamite… and an alarm clock timer. We paid Biggun Blaylock, and he… he got it for us.” Mr. Moultry swallowed, perhaps feeling hell’s fire under his buns. “It’s set to blow up that civil rights museum. We… it was all Gerald’s idea, really… decided to do it when we first heard the Lady was plannin’ on buildin’ it. Listen to me, Lightfoot!”
    “Listenin’,” he said slowly and calmly.
    “Gerald planted it, somewhere around that museum. Could be in the recreation center. I don’t know where it is, I swear to God… but it’s over there right now, and it’s gonna go off at ten in the mornin’, day after Christmas.”
    “That right?” Mr. Lightfoot asked.
    “Yes! It’s the truth, and God take me to heaven ’cause I’ve freed my soul!”
    “Uh-huh.” Mr. Lightfoot reached out. He gripped the black wire with the cutter and snip, the black wire was parted. The bomb, however, would not be silenced so easily.
    “Do you hear me, Lightfoot? That box of dynamite is over there right this minute!”
    Mr. Lightfoot eased the cutter’s blades around the white wire. A muscle clenched in his jaw, and sweat sparkled on his cheeks like diamond dust. He said, “No, it ain’t.”
    “Ain’t what?”
    “Over there. Not no more. Done found it. Gone cut this wire now.” His hand trembled. “Might blow if I’ve cut the wrong wire first.”
    “God have mercy,” Mr. Moultry whined. “Oh Jesus I swear I’ll be a good boy every day of my life if you just let me live!”
    “I’m cuttin’,” Mr. Lightfoot said.
    Mr. Moultry squeezed his eyes shut. The cutter went snip.
    KA-BOOOMMMMM!
    In that tremendous roar of destruction and fire, Mr. Moultry screamed.
    When his screaming wound down, he heard not the harps of the angels nor the devils singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” He heard: “Heh heh heh heh.”
    Mr. Moultry’s eyes flew open.
    Mr. Lightfoot was grinning. He blew a little flicker of blue flame from the snipped end of the white wire. The bomb was tamed and mute. Mr. Lightfoot spoke in a voice made hoarse by the tremendous yell